Sound Off: I’ve been a registered voter in Lawrence for over 25 years. If I go to the Aug. 7 primary and forget to bring my photo ID, will I still get some kind of ballot? Will I still be able to vote in some manner?

A registered voter has the right to vote by provisional ballot if he or she doesn’t have an ID at the time of voting, said Jamie Shew, Douglas County clerk. The voter will get a provisional ballot and information about where to send proof of ID (to elections@douglas-county.com or 832-5192) before Aug. 16 in order to have the vote counted.

Why wouldn't they? You can can carry your ID in a pocket. What if you are out jogging or hiking and you get hit by a car or injured in some other manner? It could take hours or over a day for anyone to find out who you are. Ditto for riding a bicycle, which does not require the rider to be licensed.

Apparently you never walk down the street to visit a neighbor. Apparently you assume that everyone wears clothing with pockets. And apparently you worry about really bad things happening whenever you leave the house.

The thing is...we're not all like you. We don't feel it necessary to carry a photo ID with us constantly. We don't worry constantly. And we aren't immature or clueless because we feel comfortable that way.

This seems a lot less like an honest question and more like a political complaint, especially when starting out with "I've been a registered voter for 20 years...blah...blah...blah." Seriously, if you are in Lawrence, you probably vote fairly close to your house, just go home and get it.

I don't have a problem in showing ID to vote. My problem is how it has come about. Kobach was elected on the manufactured issue of voter fraud. To this day, we still have not seen any evidence of voter fraud in Kansas.

SageonPage, you make a fair point. But then again, let's not go to a big expense of fixing a problem that simply is not there.

nice to know the clowns afraid of dead people voting are acting like bull conner
in birmingham.....game the system and disenfranchise the elderly.......I had
a parent who waited five years for a liver transplant and got it. In that time
they went a year without a DL for physical medical reasons. Near death
before the transplant they had to go get a secondary ID.....some of you archie
bunkers love to call other lazy but you're just afraid of people voting that's all....
legal people.....people you don't agree with.....people who don't drag this country
fifty to one hundred years backwards.....

I think they are more afraid of people voting who aren't the people they say they are. Which is a legitimate concern in a society where so much is decided by voting and yet has such low voter turnout. What is to stop someone from going to four different polling places claiming to be four different people and voting four times? As long as they knew a name in that district, they would be allowed to vote in the old system.

It is not too much to ask to have an ID. People have known it was going to be this way for quite awhile.

Everyone always tries to make it a race thing or a political thing. With all of the stuff you have to show an ID for, why is this one such a big deal for people? It isn't like there are republicans standing at the door of the DMV telling minorities they can't get an ID.

Everyone always complains that Republicans use scare tactics. They do. So do Democrats. The words are just different. An ID is not too much to ask.

I thought the point of these laws was to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote. Proving citizenship would require a birth certificate, naturalization document, or passport. Most other photo IDs, utility bills, tax returns, etc. only prove residency. A resident is not necessarily a citizen and therefore not necessarily eligible to vote.

Can someone explain this to me - what is a sufficient form of ID, and if it only proves residency then what's the point of the law (other than to inconvenience a certain class of voters)?

If you really want to keep people away from the polls, give them Sec. 8 housing, a block of cheese and just enough money so they can maintain a barely tolerable lifestyle. It's kept people away from the polls for decades. No reason to think that will change.

...and at the same time disenfranchise other groups of people who are less likely to have photo IDs (e.g., the poor). I thought sages were supposed to be smart? Looks like you need to read up on the Jim Crow laws.

This is not Brownbackistan, it is Kansas. The people who cooked up this law mean to suppress voting, and to frighten away first-timers. The problems don't exist anywhere except in the twisted minds of the extreme right wingers. The right to vote is such an important part of our democracy, and the efforts being made to frighten people and keep them away from the polls are VERY UN-American.

The thought of long lines of people waiting at the polls could make some voters stay away. Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew has done a smart thing by providing voters with an official card in Douglas County. We can be very grateful for that, because it is reassuring for many! Let's hope that the LJW gets on the bandwagon and provides information for worried citizens, and help INCREASE citizen participation in our area.

"The King-Lincoln-Bronzeville case is a civil rights case filed in 2006 against Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. It was based on evidence showing that during Ohio's 2004 presidential election, black voters were disproportionately purged from the voting rolls, voting machines were deliberately withheld from primarily urban polling sites, and many ballots from minority/young/poor/elderly voters in major urban areas (read: Democratic) were never counted.

The results of the 2004 election have always been at odds with the exit polls. After the election ended, the exit polls showed John Kerry won by three points instead of losing by three points and thus should have won Ohio and become the president.

While investigating the civil rights complaint, evidence emerged that Blackwell (who also served as co-chair of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign) had hired private contractors to oversee the election. One of the contractors was a long-established Bush IT operative, Mike Connell. Connell originally worked for the former CIA Director George H. W. Bush when he ran for president in 1988. "

Try cashing a check without a photo ID. Every doctors' office and hospital require an ID. To receive a valid driver's licence, you have to have a photo ID. So what is so different. There are very few people who do not have a photo ID.

Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn't you?

So what it gets down to is the radical teas are chomping at any excuse to say people they disagree with don't deserve to vote. They pray that people who think differently or have different opinions than they do, should not get to vote, They are happy to block Americans from voting they want everyone to jump on the ship. It is a lousy sinking ship when you start claiming that your opinion of their class or economic status should be the deciding factor. What sickness it is to suggest that how you feel about a fellow citizen should be any legal criteria for rather they have a vote. Those that say people should not get to vote if they don't follow a the radical line are insults to the great country they are lucky to live in. . It is a slap in the face to all the generations of people who have fought and died for the freedoms, the right to vote. No, the small weasel traitors say, hey if you don't carry your papers, if you don't drive or agree with them, if you don't think money is the main mark of character, then you don't deserve to vote. That opinion doesn't deserve anything but rebuttal. People don't only deserve to vote, it is their right. I don't care if you feel they must make a certain amount of money, or you think they should agree with your traitorous hate remarks, Until this country falls to people like that, we have the right to vote. I think this is nothing but a social jim crow law and I spit at the people who stand between a person and their legal vote, I think obstructing votes serves no one but the lowest criminal mobs.